Bangladeshi garment workers

The past two weeks have seen mass walkouts and wildcat strikes by thousands of garment workers. After five years the industry’s minimum wage structure has been adjusted but workers have rejected the proposed new wage levels.
The protests began after the first announcement by the government Wage Board of the new wage levels in September. By December there was a large movement of factory walk outs and road blockades as workers rejected the deal. These struggles reignited in the past two weeks before a general drift back to work in recent days.

The Bangladeshi minimum wage board has, after long negotiations, announced a 76% increase in garment workers’ pay, applicable to all seven pay grades. This has quickly been hailed as a great victory by some observers. We’ll go into the details to show that it’s not the result the workers continue to demand and that any gains may not be long-lasting.

Following a four day shutdown of hundreds of factories by strikes and a series of violent confrontations involving tens of thousands of people, Bangladeshi garment workers have forced the bosses into a 77% rise to the minimum wage, although it is still the lowest minimum wage in the world. This victory will hopefully be a catalyst to other garment workers in India, China, Cambodia, and Laos, who are being held back from confrontation by the boss’s threats of relocation and dismissals.

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Articles about garment workers in Bangladesh. The Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry emerged in Bangladesh in the late 1970s and quickly expanded to the point where it's now the country's dominant industry and employs around 4 million workers, 85% of them women - their very presence as a female workforce challenging patriarchal traditions. Since 2006, when a mass revolt shook the industry, RMG workers have sustained - with little union influence or membership - some of the highest levels of class struggle in the world.

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